The Lee Shore
Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall,
newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her
helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness
upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years'
dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still
another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories
yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave
of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with
the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land.
The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful;
in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper,
warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities.
But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy;
she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it
but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.
With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,
fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward;
seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake
forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid
effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on
the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God--so better is it to perish in that howling infinite,
than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!
For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?
Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod!
Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up,
leaps thy apotheosis!
